The GMD Archives — From Animal Basil to Cartoon Basil
As you are supposed to know if you're really a Great Mouse Detective ''fan, the movie is based on a bookseries by british author Eve Titus, entitled ''Basil of Baker Street. But a book is not a comic book, and you can't base a character design on a group of words. Happily, those were children books, with illustrations by Mr Paul Galdone. In those illustrations, Basil is a mouse in Sherlock Holmes closing. And by a mouse, I mean a realistic, natural-looking mouse with no anthropomorphic features beyond walking on two legs. Here is this first Basil: center The quality's not very good, of course, but good enough to notice that 1° Paul Galdone's art is wonderful and 2° It's not the Disney syle at all. Notice also, it's obvious, that this is black and white, whic means we have no indication on Basil's (and the other character's, by the way) color scheme. …oh wait, we do. It's not much, but some covers were colored. rightleft|300px Nice. (Obviously, these aren't by Mr Galdone. I can't say by who they are instead, because I don't have any informations about those artists). So that's about all Disney artists had. Nothing Disneyesque in those designs, but you get the general idea that Basil's a mouse in a Sherlock Hommes suit. A slightly more caricatural Basil, but still very animalistic (with mouselike whiskers, alhtough with no tail anymore), is featured in the ministoryboard John Musker and Ron Clements did between 1980 and 1984 to convince Ron Miller to produce The Great Mouse Detective. centerIn case you wonder, the legend "Basil is furious at Dawson for not guarding Olivia as he was told" indicates that this takes place right after a counterpart of the toyshop scene. (I say a counterpart because the legend also mentions that Ratigan himself catches Olivia, instead of Fidget as in the movie). And here enters an important character: Melvin Shaw. He already produced some painting-like artworks for The Black Cauldron, and he strikes again with some striking Great Mouse Detective concepts. Admire: center|650px Now, I have to clarify a point: I don't know in which order the pictures I am going to show you from this point were created. What I show is a likely path to have been followed, but we're not sure. You see, I only have the pictures with no data at all attached to them. Even the name of the author of the above wasn't mentionned — luckily, Shaw has a very distinct style that I was able to recognize. '' So here, we've got Basil playing violin like his model Holmes. The scene is almost a more detailed version of the illustration shown earlier, but with the violin and Mrs Judson added. center It's almost as if you were standing behind Gladone's version's Basil to obtain the view pictured by Shawn. Notice the fireplace, and the library next to it. The oversized oval queen's portrait in Shawn's concept art replaces the oval mirror of Gladone, and is located at the same place. I'm not sure the inspiration is direct, but it seems ''very likely. I'm digressing, though. The subject today is BASIL. Let's examin him closer. center|300px It's by oversizing little bits like that that you understand how much detail Mr Shawn put in his creations. Notice that in Shaw's interpretation, he has hair ''on the top of his head, different from (and not the same colour as) his fur. It wasn't there in the storyboard, so probably Shawn is creating here. Problem is, we're still stuck with a very animalistic Basil. After that, apparently it was decided that the hair wasn't a good idea, and Shawn used in other concepts a slightly altered design in consequence: center This is a shorter, more Disneyesque, and hairless Basil. We come across his brown coat for the first time, although it isn't much of a surprise — just Sherlock Holmes's classic outfit. ''Minus the hat, though. At probably the same time, this piece is produced by who-knows-who: center|500px This is a beautiful piece. Now I say probably because of the appearance of Basil, which seems like a further Disneyfication of the Shawn artwork. But storywise, this might acutally predate the storyboard: we're still dealing with a mouse village (the main location in the original books) at the size of the mice, not with mice living in the real, too-big-for-them London. Rats Haven is also a name taken straight from the book that has already disappeared in the storyboard. So I don't know. Anyway, the style itself looks a lot liek what we got in the movie, but the character aren't quite there yet. Basil seems almost shy, while Dawson still has mouse whiskers instead of his humanlike blond moustache. center This one too seems totally independant from the rest. It seems that this is directly derived from the storyboard version, without any influence from the hard-to-date artwork and Shawn's masterpieces. It's very nice, and the attitude look like the real Basil's. He is also of the same size. But the face looks more like Mrs Brisby from Don Bluth's Secret of N.I.M.H. than Basil or any other Disney mouse. …actually, we may have a trail of the author there: the early 1980's is also when a bunch of Disney animators quited, founded their own studio, directed by Don Bluth, and did The Secret of N.I.M.H. Is it possible that this piece was done by one of the animators who left soon after ? I give it a solid maybe. And now we get to this: thumb|700px Although it does look like a model-sheet, it is actually a proto-model sheet It's definitely where the real Basil came from. Not only does it look like it, but the writing on the upper right make clear that it's not some random concpet: it was shown to the directors, and approved by them (there is a small OK uner the word "rough") Notice the hair is still there. In the end, all they did was remove this hair, and make him a bit chubbier, to make him look more sympathetic. As for who did this stuff ? The quality's not good enough to allow us to read the name, but the Basil on the upper right looks more like Ratigan's profile than Basil's, so it may be by Andreas Deja, who animated (and presumably created the final design of) Ratigan. So eventually, after a few more final improvements, they came to the classic design we all know so well: center (I'd have loved to show you Basil's model sheet, but it's not available anywhere on the Web.) Catégorie:The Great Mouse Detective Archives